Shades of Black: The Origins of Colour Consciousness in the Caribbean is an important new book looking at how colour consciousness in the Caribbean has affected immigrants, and issues of race, in Britain​. It is written by former MJR trustees Clifford Hill and Nigel Pocock and current MJR Chair Alton Bell. We have been sent these details of a launch event online.

Should there be positive discrimination in the public sector?
 
As we mark Black History Month, we would be delighted to invite you to an important discussion as part of the launch of Shades of Black, a new book exposing the roots of colour consciousness and racial discrimination with a view to exploring the question ‘Should there be positive discrimination in the public sector to encourage anti-discrimination?’   
 
Aimed at creating conversation across the UK on this important area, you are invited to join us on Thursday 27th October 2022 between 12.30pm and 2.00pm. A meeting in the House of Commons will follow on November 24.

This meeting will be introduced by Sir Stephen Timms MP with contributions from Dr Clifford Hill, Pastor Alton Bell and others.

To join us online, please register here. To attend or for further information, please register or contact Adam May by email or phone 07736 949 869.

Please share this invitation to anyone you believe would benefit from this discussion.
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Find out more about Shades of Black here.

Premier Christianity magazine has given the new MJR documentary ‘After the Flood: the church, slavery and reconciliation' a 5-star review, describing it as a "beautifully made, informative and moving documentary, well worth an hour of your time." Despite the nature of some of the content, the film is not "angry", but "thoughtful, well-made, engaging content."

It notes that since the murder of George Floyd, there have been "numerous films made and books written about slavery and racism, but few that focus on the active and disgraceful role of UK churches". 

"​Superb on-location shots from the West Indies and the UK are interspersed with insights from theologians and academics who, despite their great learning, communicate well in plain, everyday English! It is incredibly well made and watchable" Read the whole review here.

For Black History Month Experience London has teamed up with the Black Cultural Archives to launch the first ever Black History Tube map, celebrating the rich and varied contribution Black people have made to London and the UK from Pre-Tudor times to the present day. Read more about some of the people featured here. Click the image to see the full map.

This is a podcast series by Dr Nathaniel Adam Tobias C------. Episodes 1 and 2 were launched online on Wednesday 22 September at 6pm, with Episode 3 to follow in November. This is part of the Henry Moore Institute's Our Monuments Research Season.

There has been a lot of talk, to put it mildly, about Britain’s statues and slavery. But what about Britain’s statues and anti-slavery? It turns out, that, while statues of slavers are among the statues Britain shows off, statues of anti-slavery activists are, in curious contrast, some of the statues Britain hides. To take us into Black History Month in the UK, this podcast series asks what, exactly, in its anti-slavery statues, Britain is hiding.

More info and links to download the first two podcasts and transcripts here.

A statue of slave trader Edward Colston that was torn down by Black Lives Matter protesters in Bristol last June has been put on public display as the centrepiece of a temporary exhibition at the city's M Shed museum. Visitors will also be asked to share their views on what should happen to the statue afterwards. Options include removing the statue from public view entirely, it being part of a museum or exhibition about Bristol's role in the transatlantic slave trade, or replacing the statue back on its plinth.
​Read more here.

Recently on BBC's Antiques Roadshow, this gentleman, getting some silver sugar containers and tools valued, told the viewing public about how Wilberforce’s campaign to abolish slavery “immediately” in 1791 was delayed by Henry Dundas’s decision to do it “gradually”, so setting back abolition for 15 years.

“We’ve calculated that about 630,000 Africans were transported into slavery on the basis of one word: gradual. While slaves were working and dying, people in Britain were consuming the sugar – in those bowls and with those tongs. And to me, those silver bowls tell us the sort of things we do in order to make money and to have a lifestyle that we think we deserve.”

The valuer’s response: “Hugely poignant. I have to say I’ve never really stopped to consider that link with the slave trade and it is deeply moving. I don’t think I can look at silver sugar basins in the same way again.”

​Well done sir!

Enslaved is a six-episode docuseries that explores 400 years of human trafficking from Africa to the New World by following the efforts of Diving with a Purpose, as they search for and locate six slave ships that went down with their human cargo. These modern day adventures serve as a springboard to tell the stories of the ideology, economics and politics of slavery, while also celebrating stories of resistance, the cultures left behind and the culture that we live in.

​Co-presented by Samual L. Jackson and Afua Hirsch, Enslaved is showing in the US and Canada in September and on BBC2 in October.
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Twelve years after publicly endorsing a campaign to build a major memorial commemorating the victims of the transatlantic slave trade when Mayor of London, now Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been urged to provide funding to build the statue. In 2008 Johnson said it was “important that this history is never forgotten”, adding: “Hyde Park is a fitting site for a permanent memorial to the millions who lost their lives and the courageous people who fought to end the brutal transatlantic slave trade.” But no funding was forthcoming then, and the government declined to fund the Hyde Park memorial in December 2019.

Patrons of the campaign include Baroness Doreen Lawrence, Sir Keir Starmer’s race relations adviser. The campaign organisers said: “Right now, there is no major memorial in England to commemorate the victims of the transatlantic slave trade. There are millions of people who were brought over from Africa in ships and kept as slaves. Many of them built Britain, but were subjected to cruelty and forced into inhumane conditions.”

To find out more, read this article. Visit the campaign website. A new £4m fundraising campaign can be found here.

Historian David Olosuga in this Guardian article states: "For people who don’t know Bristol, the real shock when they heard that the statue of a 17th-century slave trader had been torn from its plinth and thrown into the harbour was that 21st-century Bristol still had a statue of a slave trader on public display".

Edward Colston helped to oversee the transportation into slavery of an estimated 84,000 Africans, of whom, it is believed, around 19,000 died on the voyage. Their bodies were thrown into the sea. Olosuga comments: "The historical symmetry of this moment is poetic. A bronze effigy of an infamous and prolific slave trader dragged through the streets of a city built on the wealth of that trade, and then dumped, like the victims of the Middle Passage, into the water. Colston lies at the bottom of a harbour in which the ships of the triangular slave trade once moored, by the dockside on to which their cargoes were unloaded. The crowd who saw to it that Colston fell were of all races, but some were the descendants of the enslaved black and brown Bristolians whose ancestors were chained to the decks of Colston’s ships."

Olosuga goes on to condemn the "overt and shameless, but not unique" long defence of Colston's reputation which frustrated a number of campaigns to have the statue peacefully removed, or at least to have a plaque on it which told his whole story. "Today is the first full day since 1895 on which the effigy of a mass murderer does not cast its shadow over Bristol’s city centre. Those who lament the dawning of this day, and who are appalled by what happened on Sunday, need to ask themselves some difficult questions. Do they honestly believe that Bristol was a better place yesterday because the figure of a slave trader stood at its centre? Are they genuinely unable – even now – to understand why those descended from Colston’s victims have always regarded his statue as an outrage and for decades pleaded for its removal?

​Read the full article here.